The Good Lich's Story

No matter how little skin you have, your cats will always love you.

~~
I like the idea of a good lich- some sort of everyman necromancer who, instead of trying to summon armies of death and slaying people mercilessly, is just kind of curious. Like a mortician. He's interested in the effects of undeath, and its practical applications, and its abstract implications for the world he lives in. He can cast a ray of death, sure, but he mostly uses it to zap insects, which he then studies and dissects and sometimes tries to bring back to life using his magic. He's frustrated at the limitations of his craft; even the freshly dead return as mere shells of their former selves, and what use is a mindless husk?

One day he's reading through some particularly ancient scrolls while visiting the Royal Library. He can tell they've been ignored- they're gathering dust. He blows off the dust and reads through them. What at first seemed like half-mad scribbles of dubious value quickly reveal themselves as strange and unproven magical theories. Theories that he can solve...

It took him a decade, but he's finally ready. Through numerous small magical experiments, it's obvious that this is the right way. The way to true immortality; to real, eternal undeath. The phylactery is ready, the magic circles are drawn on the floor of his study, and the formulas are balanced. The potions stand nearby, and the ritual dagger is drawn. The arcane words are intoned, exactly so; the potions are briskly quaffed one after the other; the dagger is raised above his head and plunged into his chest.

He wakes up, still in the circle, still clad in only the light undergarments he performed the ritual in. He takes a deep breath, then realizes with faint alarm that his heart's stopped. He looks down at himself and sees that his flesh is gone, and only his pale bones remain. They are completely under his control. His head is clear for the first time in ages, and maybe the first time in his existence. His thoughts seem to ring around in the cool stillness of his mind.

It's time to feed the cats, he thinks. And then it's time to study. Forever.

~~
I think I might make The Nice Lich a character in Fantasy Craft. At first they'll be all "oh shit a skellington" but he'll be like "Wait, hold on, you've got the wrong idea!"

And they'll be like "Who taught skellingtons to talk?" and he'll answer them, "I'm not a skeleton, I'm a lich!" and then he'll say something polite, like he'll invite them to sit down and have a chat, or maybe he'll offer to let them stay at his house because he wants to hear their adventuring tales, or maybe he's got a problem that they can help him with ("Do you think you could settle my affairs with the merchant down the street, he insists on seeing me but he's superstitious and there's no way I could meet him like this, he'd never understand"), or maybe he doesn't particularly need anything and it's just kind of part of the world?

One of the players' characters has an interest in old books anyways and he'd probably want to see what the bony dude's got so he can leaf through them. That'd be pretty neat.